‘Carousel’ New Broadway Cast Album Releases June 8

The critically acclaimed revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel, now nominated for 11 Tony Awards, will release a new cast recording. Available digitally on Friday, June 8, the album will be in stores on Friday, July 13.

Now playing at the Imperial Theatre, Carousel is directed by three-time Tony Award winner Jack O’Brien and choreographed by 2018 Tony Award nominee Justin Peck. The revivalis the most nominated show of the 2017-2018 Broadway season with 11 Tony Award nominations, 12 Drama Desk Award nominations, and has also received three 2018 Outer Critics Circle Awards including Outstanding Choreography (Justin Peck), Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical (Lindsay Mendez), and Outstanding Orchestrations (Jonathan Tunick), and a 2018 Chita Rivera Award for Outstanding Ensemble in a Broadway show.

The Carousel Cast Recording will be released on Craft Recordings, in partnership with The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization — both part of Concord Music — and will be produced by Steven Epstein. Andy Einhorn and Sean Patrick Flahaven serve as executive producers.

The cast for this first new production in over 20 years is led by 2018 Tony Award nominee Joshua Henry as Billy Bigelow, Tony Award winner and 2018 Tony Award nominee Jessie Mueller as Julie Jordan, and 2018 Tony Award nominee Renée Fleming, in her first appearance in a Broadway musical, as Nettie Fowler. They are joined by 2018 Tony Award nominee Lindsay Mendez as Carrie Pipperidge, 2018 Tony Award nominee Alexander Gemignani as Enoch Snow, Margaret Colin as Mrs. Mullin, John Douglas Thompson as the Starkeeper, Amar Ramasar as Jigger, and Brittany Pollack as Louise.

Set in a small New England factory town, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s timeless musical Carousel describes the tragic romance between a troubled carnival barker and the young woman who gives up everything for him. Elevated to an epic scale with a sweeping musical score that features some of the most beloved numbers in the American songbook, and incandescent ballet sequences, this story of passion, loss, and redemption introduced Broadway to a new manner of musical drama and would captivate theatergoers for generations to come.

Carousel played its world premiere on Broadway at the Majestic Theatre on April 19, 1945, and received unanimous raves. Brooks Atkinson in The New York Times called Carousel “nothing less than a masterpiece.” John Chapman of the Daily News proclaimed it “the finest musical play I have ever seen.”

In 1999, Time Magazine named Carousel the best musical of the century, saying that Rodgers & Hammerstein “set the standard for the 20th-century musical, and this show features their most beautiful score and the most skillful and affecting example of their musical storytelling.”